


On the Pier, Finally

by ElectricKettle (DaLaRi)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon Compliant, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Feelings Realization, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29814741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaLaRi/pseuds/ElectricKettle
Summary: Three scenes on how a decade of yearning and pining finally saw its fruition.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50





	On the Pier, Finally

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second post-s15 fic, because my first one was too depressing.  
> I loved these two far too much to let them not have something close to happiness, in the end.
> 
> cw: the first scene is a panic attack

Dean couldn’t breathe. Cas was gone. Cas was _gone_. Cas was gone and it was all his fault. The tiny, narrow room closed around him— _Not for nothing Cas, but the last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid_ —and the burning brand of Cas’s handprint on his jacket twitched his muscles down to the bone— _I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition—_ and heaved great breaths of stale air, dust and the faint taste of powdered glass that followed Billie whenever she appeared. Cas was gone-- _I was getting too close to the humans in my charge. To you—_ and tried to calm down.--- _I’ve begun to question my orders—_ It was just another death--- _you’re the most caring, loving man I have ever known… will ever know._ \--- it was just another death. It wasn’t even Chuck. It wasn’t even Chuck. He pulled one breath in after another.

Sam called him, and Dean forced his bile back down his throat. It was just another death.--- _Maybe happiness isn’t in the having---_ He couldn’t do this. --- _Maybe it’s just in saying it---_ This was one time too many. This was one too many times. --- _I love you---_ He let the call ring out. He grit his teeth until his jaw screamed, and ignored the fact that he was crying.

\---

The worst part was when he ran out of tears. The intrusions of the memories became a slurry, an unending stream. Cas’s coat under his hands, reunion after reunion after reunion, the solid thunk of Cas in his arms, the feeling he would never, ever have again. Even if Cas lived, Dean hadn’t been able to say it. Cas wouldn’t touch him again, after Dean had failed him. Cas had been facing down the Empty itself, and Dean couldn’t even give him anything as pale as “you’re my brother, Cas, but I love you too.” Even if it was a lie to say anything less than “I love you,” he should have lied. Cas had died for Dean again and again, and he never said goodbye. He hadn’t in years. Nothing like this.

_You have me confused with the other angel, you know the one in the dirty trench coat who’s in love with you._

_He’s an angry sleeper. Like a bear._

He had missed so much. A decade. A _decade!_ How long had Cas had eyes for him? A burning, uncomfortable prickling swept over him, retroactive embarrassment that had him pressing his thumbs into his eyes until they ached because he couldn’t afford this, not when Cas was dead. What did it matter if, suddenly, innocent flirting with a straight angel became a decade of leading him on? What did it matter if his stomach was turning rapid, visceral summersaults at the way Cas had always looked at him, playing in his mind. What did it _matter_ if it wasn’t just that Cas had had the hots for him, that he had _loved_ Dean? What did it matter that Dean had been in love with him for years----

_Fuck._

_God._

His life was a joke. His life was a long, drawn out cosmic joke, and he couldn’t even turn to the angel who was in love with him to joke about it. He’d died enough times to know that Cas would want to hear about it when he saw Dean again ( _god,_ the giddy turn his stomach made at the thought of that reunion. he knew how Cas’s face felt between his hands. he couldn’t let himself imagine. he _couldn’t._ )

But Cas was _dead_ , and you could never tell with them. The people closest to him had so often had their last deaths be just as sudden. But this was Cas. Cas, the whack-a-mole, Cas the sidewalk dandelion. He had to come back. There was no way he wouldn’t.

The pit in his stomach hardened, flipped. He had to see Cas again. He was going to kill god tomorrow, and whatever happened, he would see the angel again.

\-------

_Dean._

Cas was luminous in the diffuse light of heaven.

Dean had found the pier after an endless stretch of driving, and since Cas was already sitting in one of the chairs when he got there, he didn’t know if Cas had created the place wholesale when he realized what Dean had been looking for.

The lake was placid, and as Dean sat down, Cas reached over and handed him a beer. He breathed in.

“You know I loved you then, right?”

“I had guessed, when I confessed to you. It seemed too good to be true.”

“No, not then. I mean here.” Dean gestured with the mouth of the bottle, which was cold even though it wasn’t sweating. “The first time we were here. I didn’t know that was what it was.”

Cas took a sip of his own beer. Dean had missed his pregnant pauses, and years of daydreams of kissing him flooded him, and he choked. Cas, unaffected, just looked at him, and took another sip before answering him.

“I don’t know if I was able to love, at that point. But if I could, I was in love with you.” _In love with you_ carried the weight that Dean had hoped it might. He nodded.

“How often are you around, in Heaven?” He was sweating. He hadn’t sweated since arriving. Cas looked at him.

“I’ve been rebuilding with Jack, but time passes differently for me than it does for you.” Reading uncertainty on Dean’s face, he added, “whenever you pray for me, I’ll come.”

Dean took another sip. “And where you go, can I come with you?”

Cas frowned. “Dean, this is heaven. Everyone you’ve ever loved is waiting for you.”

“I know. I’m asking one of them if I can come with him. He’s kind of dumb, though. I don’t know if he’ll—”

Cas leaned over, like it was nothing, and kissed him. His mouth was smooth and damp and about as chapped as lips could get in heaven. Dean was grabbing at him before he realized he was responding.

He pulled Cas onto the chair with him, to the angel’s laughing noise of surprise, and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, until Cas separated them and touched Dean’s face and he realized he was smiling, crying so hard he was shaking. Cas looked at him with shock, frozen, for the first time uncertain.

Dean laughed. “This is good, Cas. Good tears.” He leaned up, kissed him, slowly, gentle. “I missed you. So much I couldn’t breathe.”

Cas’s mouth sat uneasy. “I expected it would be longer before I saw you.”

Dean’s heart clenched. “I tried. Killer mimes can happen to anybody.”

Cas’s body had gone rigid in Dean’s lap, face devastated. “You went back to hunting. After everything?”

Dean, paragon of unhealthy anger, couldn’t find any drive to start a fight. “It’s all I’m good at.”

Cas tilted up his face, kissed him. “But it’s not all you’re good _for_. Jack said you got a job offer.”

Dean winced, half-regretful, shrugged. “The Roadhouse re-opened.” Cas’s eyes went wide, he went to stand. “It wasn’t Jack’s fault. I’m happy, and I’ve got however long to spend until Sam gets here. Then we get to cause chaos with the whole family back together.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “My dad lives down the road from me. Apparently, he and my mom are back together.” This time Cas’s eyes fully blazed, and Dean couldn’t stop him from standing.

“When I said Jack should have your mother down the road I didn’t mean—” Dean’s fingers on his wrist held him back from wherever he was about to storm off to.

“Just let me come with you. Unless it’ll get you in some kind of trouble.”

Cas smiled, incandescent, unrepentant, and all that Dean adored.

“Since when did that stop us? I’ll show you the ocean. It's what I did while you were gone.”

“Can I make an island?”

“I'll show you how to fit it in.”

They stood and kissed, a lingering press of lips. Dean pulled Cas to him, the reality of him in his arms sinking in with the solidity of the angel in his arms. Cas hugged him back fiercely, unselfconsciously, and Dean kissed him again. They separated, and Dean slung an arm around Cas's shoulders.

"Come on. Let's go see the beach."

Cas caught Dean's raised eyebrow and grinned, face glowing with true happiness. "I think you'll enjoy it."

"Is there a beach bar? If this is heaven there'd better be drinks with little umbrellas."

The sounds of their conversation faded as they disappeared then with a sound like the rustle of wings.

The Impala watched them go, illuminated in the gentle afternoon light. She was glad, after all, to see them finally parting. She loved her eldest child, and to see him happy brought her a measure of peace. She too was deserving of rest.


End file.
